All of us at the Maynard Institute were moved by the wonderful tributes to Dori Maynard on her untimely death last month.

Our task now is to continue her legacy and the work of helping the media better reflect our diverse society.

Our goals remain the same. Our work will continue, as Dori had urged it must. Now, we are fashioning new strategic directions.

Whenever I’ve faced a big task at the institute, I think about our founders, a wondrous group of journalists who were far ahead of the time.

These nine journalists were black, white, and Hispanic. They included Bob Maynard, for whom this organization is now named, his wife, Nancy Hicks Maynard, Dorothy Gilliam, Frank Sotomayor, Steve Montiel, and Leroy Aarons, who would later found the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. Our board chair, Mark Trahant, is Native American. I’m proud to be the institute’s first Asian American executive.

Our founders saw needs and built solutions, at times serving themselves as teachers in training programs for journalists of color. Their ideas were widely copied by academia and by the industry.

This is now another time that requires creative solutions. We have the opportunity to teach and train through a variety of methods and mediums. We can train cross-generationally, not just from older to younger. All can be teachers; all are learners.

I’ve had the opportunity to speak with many of you in the weeks since Dori’s death. You’ve asked what you can do to help the institute.

So, I ask this: Think of the problems. Think of possible solutions. Think of something you could build. Think of experiments the institute could try. What could you teach? What do you want to learn? What can we do so money is not a barrier?

Every January when I offer my online course, “Race and Racism in the News,” I ask students to list and briefly analyze media coverage of their three most important race-related stories from the previous year. When they do this exercise this month, they will have a plethora of stories from which to choose.

The tone was set for 2014 on Jan. 19 with the outrageous and controversial backlash after Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, who had just made the play of his life, “ranted” on air to Fox Sports sideline reporter Erin Andrews. Criticism of the then 25-year-old, including vitriolic tweets, laid the foundation for the media’s sometimes mediocre job in subsequent months on a story clearly about race and young men of color.

Martin G. Reynolds of Digital First Media receives the SPJ NorCal Board of Directors’ Distinguished Service to Journalism Award. Reynolds is senior editor for community engagement and training for Bay Area News Group and Digital First Media, western region.

Your tax-deductible contribution will help us carry out Dori's vision of fair, accurate and equitable media for all segments of society.

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Work We <3 | FDP

Instead of spending all our time calling out journalism that doesn't work, we want to find work we like. We'd like to encourage our readers to submit links to content that is moving or challenging and that goes beyond the standard narrative either at the level of form or content. In other words, we want to see journalism that works.

We're particularly interested in work at the nexus of the following categories: